21 Apr, 2008
Most parents are always on at there kids for not reading these days, apparently we all spend to much time on the internet. Well I have to disagree I think I read more than my parents did at my age. This is because I read hundreds of articles through my RSS reader, yes I don’t read all of them, but I read about 20 articles roughly and that is more words than my parents read a day in there books. When you actually think about it the amount we read and write on the computer is huge, there are chat clients were we chat in text and read. On Facebook we read and write on each others wall and right now I am writing this blog post and you are reading it! and Yet I am still forced to read the oldest and most boring books in English, when I already do more reading than my parents. I personally find it hard for something to get my attention for a long time so siting looking at static page of a book is boring for me while having a continuously changing screen keeps me interested. The Blogoshpere is full of 13-17 year old bloggers that read and write thousands of words a day. twitter is a great example we are getting continuous bits of information in text form to read, so really we must be the best generation at reading and writing.
Interesting post. While I do agree that RSS feeds can sometimes substitute for books in terms of educational effect, the focus is not on looking at letters, assembling them in your mind and digesting their meaning. What parents are concerned about is that what you read on the intertubes is essentially crap. They want you to read literature, meaning well-written texts, not someone saying “sup lol hows u?” on someone’s Facebook wall.
I do actually read quite a bit of literature and thoroughly enjoy it, but I doubt I can ever read as much in actual books as I read online.
Rupert, you really don’t understand the importance of reading well organized, perfectly spelled, perfectly arranged pieces of creative fictional writing.
Reading things on the internet is much different. A lot of the stuff, as Henning said, is “crap”. What you are saying is typical of any parent-hating, techno-loving teenager. The importance of being able to read, understand and write creative fiction is an immense skill that is so satisfying to use – no match for jumbled, badly spelt and organized blog posts. One of the reasons I quit.
Eh. Kind-of. I’m the only person amongst my friends who ACTUALLY makes an attempt at typing in perfect English in chats, emails, etc. Most people just type, “sup with u? nm here, just chillin,” or something like that.
But, for the record, I’m an obsessive feed-reader and don’t just subscribe to friends’ blogs and crappy little websites. I really do keep track of the news, and tend to know more about current events than most other people that I know.
So, what you say KIND-OF stands true, but not really. Yeah, we’re reading a lot online, but it’s not necessarily educational.
Ted, enough with the sidestabs
I must confess, I’ve given up spelling and capitalization in instant messaging. My friends type too fast, I can’t be bothered with it when I need to keep up. I would say my grammar is accurate, though. Blog posts, however, are a completely different matter.
I see where you are coming from, I just think that a lot of it is still written well, but the really problem is that parents try to get us to read books that have no relevance to what we are interested in, this is were the web comes in, we are reading stuff that interest us.